An Elevator Story Changes Medicine

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The elevator ride that changed my career because between the ground floor and the fifth floor, she told me she had cured this patient with about 10 weeks of counseling sessions. And the idea that you could alleviate a serious physical condition just by talking to somebody and that it could be related to stress that you went through as a kid, those were all very new concepts for me. But I thought if I'm going to be a complete doctor, I should learn a little bit about this. It might come in handy from time to time. So she taught me her basic framework. And then, surprise number two, when I got into practice, I found that whenever I asked those questions that Harriet had taught me of my patients with normal diagnostic tests, I was finding these issues: stress, trauma, emotions, childhood adversity, other challenges in life over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Welcome to this Empty Nest Life, the podcast dedicated to helping you embrace this transformative season with purpose, passion, and joy. In each episode, we explore stories, strategies, and insights to help turn your empty nest into an exciting new chapter. Whether you're redefining your identity, pursuing new passions, or finding peace in the pause, you're in the right place. Here's your host, the Empty Nest coach, Jay Ramsden.

Dr Clark Finds A Missing Clue

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Hey there, my empty nest friends. Did you know that almost 30% of people between the ages of 45 and 64 suffer from chronic pain? I wasn't aware of this until recently, but a portion of those illnesses aren't caused directly by physical injury or disease. Instead, they're caused by brain-generated medical conditions. Today, I have the privilege of welcoming Dr. David Clark, the president of the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms, to the studio. Dr. Clark is dedicated to ending chronic pain triggered by emotional stress and trauma through awareness, diagnosis, and treatment. And he also hosts the podcast, The Story Behind the Symptoms, where he explores the origins of unexplained symptoms and the transformative potential of understanding one's condition. We're going to dive into the complexities of chronic pain and healing and more right now. Dr. Clark, welcome to this emptiness life. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on. Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. This is something that I've been looking at a little bit because I know lots of people suffer from chronic pain. And as we know, it's not all directly related to a physical injury or sort of some sort of physical trauma. You have started to let people know and be a big proponent of that there is emotional and trauma-based chronic pain. How did you get into this line of work? How did you get into wanting people to be aware of it? Tell me a little bit more about your story.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah, I'm a very traditionally trained doctor. And of course, all of my focus was on organs and structures and how they were responsible for physical pain or other forms of illness. And it wasn't until the eighth year of my training when I encountered a patient I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing or treating, that I finally ran into this brain-generated condition for the first time. This was a woman who had a severe gastrointestinal problem. She was referred to us actually from another university because they couldn't find any explanation. We couldn't find any explanation, even with our very specialized testing that we did. And I was essentially doing her exit interview and telling her that she was going to have to live with this. But we kept talking and eventually she trusted me enough to say that she had been severely abused as a girl. And I had never heard that from a patient before. I had no instruction that I should even be looking for something like that. But it was very striking in her history. It had stopped happening 25 years in the past, so I didn't think it was related to her severe illness. But I thought, okay, at least I've uncovered something that should be addressed. I sent her to a psychiatrist named Harriet Kaplan, who had some interest in these brain-to-body conditions and forgot all about her. Until three months later, I ran to Harriet in an elevator. The elevator ride that changed my career because between the ground floor and the fifth floor, she told me she had cured this patient with about 10 weeks of counseling sessions. And the idea that you could alleviate a serious physical condition just by talking to somebody, and that it could be related to stress that you went through as a kid, those were all very new concepts for me. But I thought if I'm going to be a complete doctor, I should learn a little bit about this. It might come in handy from time to time. So she taught me her basic framework. And then, surprise number two, when I got into practice, I found that whenever I asked those questions that Harriet had taught me of my patients with normal diagnostic tests, I was finding these issues: stress, trauma, emotions, childhood adversity, other challenges in life over and over again. Five or six patients a week throughout my career. It's over 7,000 now, counting up to this day.

What Neuroplastic Symptoms Mean

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Wow. Yeah, I think it's it's powerful for people to understand like that. This is not something that that is just a physical base, like a car accident or you trip and break your ankle or something along those lines. There is a great book, The Body Holds the Score. So I'm assuming that this is a lot of that as well. But can you explain for people exactly what is neuroplastic symptoms and how do they differ from maybe traditional pain?

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yeah, well, you can't tell in terms of the severity of the pain. It can put people in the hospital, it can go on for years or even decades, it can cause other forms of illness. So we're talking here about migraines, dizziness, ringing in the ears, visual disturbances, jaw problems, swallowing difficulty, pain in the spine is a big one, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, chronic fatigue, long COVID, certain kinds of rashes, pain in the female pelvis, chest, abdomen. The list goes on and on. The only common denominator is that people tend to have more than one symptom at a time. But they're generated by the brain. There are real changes in the nerve circuits that affect how signals coming from the body are processed, and then what signals are sent back to the body that can also create symptoms. But it's 100% real. It's linked to stress and trauma, as I mentioned. And if you know what to look for, if you can uncover these issues, it can be successfully treated. And there are studies now from leading centers across North America that have shown, in comparison to the older forms of treatment, dramatically better outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Okay. So if I'm hearing you correctly, the brain has the ability to, I think it's neuroplasticity, right? It can rewire. So in the example of Harriet helping the patient that you couldn't help at the time in your eighth year of training, that she was able to help that client, right? Probably rewire her brain to some extent to help alleviate the symptoms. Is that fair? Am I getting it?

Brain Scans And Rapid Improvement

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Yeah, that's what we're seeing. There's a study from 2003 of a patient with severe irritable bowel where they scanned her brain and they showed physical changes in the circuits after treatment. But the better example is the Boulder Back Pain Study of 150 people with chronic back pain. And the group that got the neuroplastic recovery therapy, which is this new form of treatment, not only did they have a 75% reduction in their pain in four weeks after having had pain for 10 years on average before then, but they also scanned their brains before and after treatment. And they found that there were structural changes that had happened again, just from talking to people. It's truly a remarkable thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, I for my listeners, I would assume, like for a lot of us, when we hear doctors speak, we sometimes it's hard for us to understand how does this apply to me or what does that look like? So, what are some of the most common neuroplastic symptoms you've encountered in your practice? And how do they how do patients, I guess it's probably better questions, how do patients describe their experience to you?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Yeah, well, and I should start by saying that at the website symptomatic.me, we have a 12 question self-assessment quiz that people can take, take less than three minutes, that'll give you a lot of information about whether any of these concepts apply to your personal situation. But the symptoms are described just as you would symptoms from an organ disease or structural damage. If somebody's got back pain, you can't initially tell if it's neuroplastic or if it's coming from a structural problem. So you do a physical exam, you do x-rays or MRI, you make sure that there's not a pinched nerve causing numbness or loss of reflexes or muscle weakness. But it turns out if you don't have that evidence of nerve damage, 88% of the time, according to a recent study, chronic back pain is brain generated. But the symptoms themselves feel the same.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Ah, okay. So then the people might be like, oh, it could be a pinch nerve, right? I've had one before, or this is what people tell me a pinch nerve feels like, but it could have some underlying cause to it that's not necessarily physical.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

So if the doctor's not if the doctor's not coming up with a really clear explanation for the symptoms, or if they do put a label on what's causing your symptoms, but you're not getting better the way the doctor expects you to, that's a really good time to look into the possibility of a neuroplastic cause.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Okay. So how do how do people even go about understanding what the the triggers are? I'm sure that's crucial in treating neuroplastic symptoms. How do they even get to the point where, okay, I understand what a trigger may be from?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Yeah, well, I like to start with what kinds of stresses are going on in your life right now. And when the stresses fluctuate up and down, do your symptoms fluctuate up and down with them? Or was there something really bad that happened in your life right before the symptoms began? Or did you go through experiences as a kid that you would never want a child of your own to go through? And it doesn't have to be the really bad traumas or abuse or violence or alcoholism, for example. It can be more subtle than that. It can be pressure on the kid to perform that, or pressure that they never seem to be able to live up to, or being made to put your emotions away when you're feeling negatively about something. A lot of parents have the misguided idea that negative emotions are not something they want their kid to experience, and they ask them to kind of stuff them away somewhere, but they're taking away an important signal about your interactions in the world, and that can lead to stress later on in life, including triggers, the most common of which is a parent who didn't treat you well as a kid who's still in your life today as an adult. My first book is called They Can't Find Anything Wrong. And the first story in that book is a woman who was hospitalized at a prestigious university 60 times over 15 years with no diagnosis. All her attacks of dizziness and vomiting were linked to interactions with her abusive mother, who was still mistreating her when the patient was 50 years old.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Okay. So I've just come across this term, and I'm wondering how this might affect. That sounds like it's almost like deep stress. That was the term. Deep stress. And so how might that be connected to adverse childhood experiences the way that you just described it?

Triggers Stress Trauma And Childhood

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, deep stress is a term that I sometimes use for stress that people are not fully appreciating or recognizing in their own lives. So it's um none of us has a parallel life to compare ourselves with. So many of my patients, when they look back, they will tell me, Yeah, I went through some things when I was a kid, but it wasn't that bad. Other people have been through worse than me. I don't, I don't think it's affecting me today. But then I ask them to imagine their own child or a child that they care about going through exactly the same things that they did, while they themselves have to be a butterfly on the wall and watch their own child try to cope with everything that they they did. And if they're watching that, are they feeling sad? Are they feeling angry? Are they getting upset watching this happen? Even for just a week or so, that can tell you a lot about whether those events from the past could still be affecting you today. And then we can follow up on that and look into uh stressful personality traits that can come out of that, like perfectionism and people pleasing and not caring for yourself, and lots of other things that can be addressed. Even though the child's stress was in the past, we can deal with it in the present day.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

So it's almost like it's hidden or uncovered stress, right? Most people think of stress as oh, I'm stuck in traffic trying to get to a meeting, or I had a fight with my partner or spouse, or things aren't going well. But this sounds like it's more like hidden, something that we don't recall.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah, it becomes uh oftentimes uh a part of who you are, and you don't necessarily recognize the impact that it's having. Many of my patients, for example, uh are going through life having learned as kids that they just weren't measuring up, or that they were second rate, or that they were, in some more difficult cases, made to feel worthless about themselves, or they grew up in the equivalent of a minefield where some days everything was fine in their household and other days something really bad happened. But they could never tell what kind of a day it was going to be, so they had to be constantly watchful and vigilant. And people who go through that as adults, they have had impacts on their personalities. That they are the kinds of people that they take care of everybody else in their world, but they don't know how to put themselves on the list of people they take care of. So they're taking care of their job, their spouse, their kids, their neighbors, their extended family, their social groups. But when you ask them, what do you do for yourself? What do you do for fun? And I don't have time for that. But that will catch up with you. Sooner or later, your body is gonna protest.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yes, yeah, and that's something that I talk a lot about is care primary caregivers tend to be those kind of people pleasers, whether it came from hidden or deep stress in their past or not, it's something like you can only give so much until your your body says no more. And that's where a lot of maybe perhaps other chronic illnesses or pain come from as well. For the people who are are are tuning in, you talk about the deep stress, but are there characteristics that linked to chronic pain specifically that's something they can say, oh, I better look into this a little bit more deeply?

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Well, the the start of it is have you been to the physician who've done a good diagnostic evaluation and they're not finding an organ disease or structural damage to explain it. And at that point, you can ask the doctor, do you think it would be helpful for me to look into whether stress could be causing this? Because many physicians are a little bit reluctant to bring that up because they're afraid that their patient is gonna react badly to it and say, Look, my symptoms are real. I am not imagining these things. They are not in my head. And I'm gonna go find a doctor who knows what they're doing. So doctors tend to hold back from suggesting this to people. But if the patient says, Well, you've done all the tests, should I be looking into whether stress could be a contributing factor here? And if the doctor says, Yeah, I think that's it'd be a good idea, then absolutely this is something you should pursue. The other major circumstance is if they think that they know what's wrong, but and they've applied the treatment for it, but the treatment isn't working, at least not the way the doctor expects. Okay. That's another time to look for whether stress could be contributing.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Contributing to it. Is is this what is maybe classically known as psychosomatic?

SPEAKER_02 16:57

That's an illness.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Okay.

Deep Stress And People Pleasing

SPEAKER_02 17:00

But it it carries the connotation that people are imagining their symptoms or that they are just mentally not capable of handling their own stress. They're neurotic. It's got a lot of overtones to it that really aren't true. My patients actually are, on average, mentally stronger than most people. They're simply carrying much larger amounts of stress than they realize. We're releasing the latest version of my podcast, The Story Behind the Symptoms, is an interview with a Royal Marine from the UK. This guy is a trained expert in handling stress and fear and anxiety. There are few people in this world that can do that better than a Royal Marine. And yet he was absolutely flattened by neuroplastic symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

And I appreciate the clarification because I would assume a lot of people have heard the term psychosomatic as opposed to neuroplastic symptoms. So that's super helpful, I think, for people to understand. Oh, there is something here. So I appreciate you sharing that and clearing it up. What prompted you on your journey to actually form the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms? Was there like a key moment that you recall? It was like, oh, here's the moment that people really need to know about this.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Yeah, there was a absolutely a key moment. A colleague of mine in Michigan organized a conference where he invited several dozen people who were doing this work. Most of us had never met each other. Most of us didn't even know anybody else who was doing this work around the country. And there were people from all different professions from Europe that came all across the United States. And we spent a day and a half speaking for 20, 30 minutes each, talking about our work. And everybody had found their way to the doing the same kind of diagnosis and treatment, even though we all started out from completely different areas. I'm a gastroenterologist. One of the other attendees that I happened to sit next to was a physical therapist from Yorkshire in England. And yet we had both arrived at the same conclusions for completely different symptoms, but equally uh effective. And when the conference was over, we said we have to do something to form an educational organization. And that's where the nonprofit was born, because we knew that there were 60 million Americans and just the same proportion in Europe and around the world that were suffering from this. And very few healthcare professionals have been trained formally in how to diagnose and treat it.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Okay. So you the conference itself now is full-blown. You've created one from the nonprofit. You have the A ATNS conference now. I would imagine it's obviously for medical professionals, but is there educational opportunities there for patients as well?

Why Psychosomatic Feels Like A Slur

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah, we had quite a number of patients that came. We emphasized our speakers talking to the audience without using their technical jargon because we've got medical professionals who speak in jargon. We've got mental health professionals who speak in jargon, and they don't speak in the same jargon. So we needed everybody to speak plain English so that the people in our audience who were not professionals could also comprehend. And we had 350 people from around the world. We had everybody from New Zealand to Israel and places in between that came there. How many years has the conference been taking place? It was virtual for a number of years, but it's been live for the last two years. And the next one is October 15 to 17, 2026, in Dallas, Texas.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Excellent. And how can people find out more information about the work that you do?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Well, symptomatic.me is much easier to remember than the name of the nonprofit. So we recommend people go there and start with the 12 question quiz if they want to find out more about themselves. But there are so many resources there now. We've got my podcast, two colleagues of mine do a podcast focused on the science. We have recordings of the live conference and the virtual ones. We have for people who support us as members, we've got monthly QA's with experts that are held on Zoom that people can write in their questions. We have recommended books and apps that are recommended by us because they're science-based. So just tons of resources on there that people can get better. Also a directory of practitioners. If the the books and the webinars and the conferences are not enough, there are practitioners who've taken extra training to be experts in this that people can connect with.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

It's fascinating to me this conversation around how this could be something that people listening to this episode could be like, oh, this could be a game changer for me. So I appreciate you sharing some a little bit about that with us today. But what as you're like looking at your life and the and your journey, what's currently your biggest motivator for you in life?

Building ATNS And Training Clinicians

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Well, we know that there are in the United States alone 60 million people that are suffering from this. And we've only got a couple of hundred practitioners that are trained in how to do this. So our motivation is to train everybody. And we want to start with the idea that the brain can cause real physical symptoms in the body, real pain and illness, not imaginary. And once people understand that, whether they're They're public or professionals, the next logical question is, well, why is the brain doing this? And that leads us into the stress, trauma, emotions, other challenges in life. And once those are uncovered, people can get better. As we've seen in the boulder back pain study, 75% improvement in four weeks after 10 years. It just incredible. And studies from Halifax, Harvard, UCLA, Detroit are confirming the same thing. And we want to bring those kinds of outcomes to everybody who needs it.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah, I would imagine you hear from a lot of folks who this has been a game changer for. It's actually changed their lives. Is there a couple of examples you can share with us so people might be able to see themselves in those stories?

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yeah, well, that first patient whose attacks of dizziness and vomiting were triggered by her abusive mother, she had 15 years and they would just strike out of the blue six to 10 times a year. Half of them would put her in the hospital. But once we uncovered the connection and she saw it for herself, it came into her conscious awareness, she was cured on the spot. I wish I could claim to cure everybody that quickly, but she never had another attack. The Royal Marine that I spoke to today, I didn't treat him personally, but he found these same concepts through searching online. He had been just flattened for five years. But once he uncovered these ideas, he was pretty much back to normal in three weeks. Other people take longer. I don't want to set up an artificial standard here. There are some of my patients that needed years of psychotherapy to achieve the same outcome. But everybody can be put on a pathway toward ultimately healing from this.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, I would imagine it is dependent on how deeply rooted the deep stress is.

Tools Quiz Resources And Practitioner Help

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah, I mean, my patients have oftentimes, not everybody, but often been through big challenges when they were kids. But there's a wide spectrum of how severe those were, the individual's resilience, uh, how much positive support they got when they were kids to counteract the adversity that they went through. So there's a huge range. And nobody should feel like they're a failure if they don't instantly recover from this. The main goal is for people to see that they're making progress. And once they see that, they're encouraged to continue. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Well, I'm I'm super curious. Before I let you go, what's been one of the things that you've learned about yourself through this journey of helping others?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

I think probably the best thing was in how to be a better parent. I heard story after story about patients' experiences as kids that didn't work very well for them. And one of those was for the parents to be very detail-oriented, which I absolutely was in the workplace. But I learned from my patients that it's not such a good thing when it comes to your own kids. So I learned to back off, celebrate their achievements, and not worry too much when they messed up. And that's worked out extremely well. And I'm always been grateful to my patients for teaching me that.

Recovery Stories Parenting Lesson Farewell

SPEAKER_01 25:57

That's a wonderful way, I think, to end this episode as a reminder. It's A, it's never too late to investigate a new way in terms of how we parent, but also if we're struggling with chronic pain and we can't find a solution that we feel is physical and it's not been working with our doctors, is to explore another path. And it seems like this might be something that people could explore to see if there's some release for them to feel better.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah, absolutely. The transformation that I've seen is one of the reasons why I kept going with this work for the last 40 years.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Wow. And that's a testament to you and how powerful I think this conversation around the neuroplastic symptoms is. So, Dr. Clark, thank you so much for joining me on This Emptiness Life. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you today.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Thank you for bringing all this to your audience. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Thank you for listening to This Emptiness Life. Remember, this chapter isn't an ending, it's an invitation to redefine, rediscover, and reignite your life. If today's episode sparks something in you, don't forget to take that first step and visit thisemptynesslife.com and click Work With Me to get the conversation started. Until next time, keep your heart open, your mind curious, and your spirit shining. This Empty Nest Life is a production of Impact One Media LLC, all rights reserved.